Rosenworcel Says AI Will Be Key to Managing Airwaves

The “historic sweet spot” for wireless was between 600 MHz and 3 GHz, but that’s changing, Rosenworcel said in a speech to a ministerial meeting. “It’s time to get up, get going, and explore new spectrum frontiers,” she said. “With 5G service, we will see unprecedented demand for our airwaves. To manage what is coming, we need to look at new models for spectrum management. We need innovative ways to make more room on the road.”

Increases in computing power and data storage are leading to big advances in AI, Rosenworcel said. “We need to take this new-found cognitive ability and teach wireless devices to manage their transmissions on their own.” That might sound far-fetched, but the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is hosting a competition among companies around the world to design wireless networks that rely on AI, she said. “Smarter networks can work with each other without a central authority in order to determine the best use of spectrum in any environment,” she said. “This has the potential to radically increase spectrum efficiency and decrease interference challenges.”

A year ago, 5G was still just a “buzzword,” but the approval of the first standards late last year is triggering industry to move faster, Börje Ekholm, CEO of Ericsson, said during a keynote. Now, “we see the technology coming to market,” he said. “We have several contracts for commercial deliveries already this year.” Some markets, including parts of Asia, will see a “very aggressive” rollout, he said. “We’re going to see different models depending ultimately on the market and the market conditions.”

Ekholm said Europe isn’t likely to be “left behind,” on 5G, but needs to do more to deregulate and should focus on harmonizing spectrum. Longer terms for spectrum licenses would also help Europe keep up, he said. The U.S. will likely have a relatively quick deployment of 5G, with no need for a government network, he said. “We’re believers in free markets,” he said. "When we talk about national infrastructure, we often discuss roads and railroads but as a matter of fact mobile infrastructure is equally as important,” Ekholm later told CNBC.

The “fourth industrial revolution” will be characterized by the IoT, AI, robotics, drones and sensors, said Mohamed Kande, vice chairman of PwC, also at MWC. “The acceleration is happening across these technologies at the same time,” he said. “That’s where the revolution is coming from.”

No industry will “escape” the digital revolution, said Sue Siegel, General Electric chief innovation officer. A key change is the move from centralized to distributed services. “It used to be you went to a hospital, you got care,” she said. Now, patients can seek healthcare at retail centers or at home, she said. Another big change is that people are using the sharing economy and no longer need to make big investments upfront, Siegel said. With Uber, “you’re buying the ride and not the car,” she said. A third change is the proliferation of smart devices, she said. “Everything is connected,” she said. “It’s data, data everywhere.”

Siegel said the pace of change will never again be as slow as it is today. “We at GE are embracing all of this. We’re taking in all of this convergence very, very quickly," she said. "And we are reinventing ourselves.” GE founder Thomas Edison led the second industrial revolution and now we’re starting the fourth, she said.

Data is crucial for Formula 1, said champion McLaren driver Fernando Alonso. “Each car is providing so much data in every single second.” Everything the driver does, every adjustment, is transmitted in real time to the garage, he said: “Formula 1 has been always a lab for many experiments and many new concepts and it’s no different in data.”

Formula 1 pushes the boundaries of technology, said Zak Brown, executive director of McLaren Technology Group. “It’s a very aggressive environment,” he said. “It’s very bumpy; these cars are getting rattled around. … There’s a lot of heat.” Drivers have to deal with much data, Brown said. “Drivers need to be extremely intelligent and almost engineers themselves.” “We’re just a piece of the technology in the middle,” said Airgain CEO Chuck Myers, whose company designs the antennas used in McLaren’s car. One key is building the lightest antenna package possible, he said. “It’s really about how you get weight off the car and how do you get the data as fast as possible,” Myers said.

MWC/5G Notebook

T-Mobile said it will build out 5G in 30 cities this year, with customers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and Las Vegas the first to benefit when the initial 5G smartphones become available early next year. T-Mobile said it will use high-frequency spectrum for its first 5G deployments. It's working with Ericsson on the rollouts.

“Customers in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles will begin experiencing 5G-like capabilities, including significant increases in data speed and capacity, as Sprint rolls out advanced network technology called Massive MIMO,” Sprint said. Sprint plans to expand to other markets including Atlanta, Houston and Washington, D.C. later this year, it said. “In 2018 and 2019 Sprint expects to deploy thousands of Massive MIMO radios, significantly increasing network capacity for millions of customers across the country.”

“Industry is clearly moving away from discussions about what 5G could be and towards what 5G WILL be,” blogged Hans Vestberg, Verizon president-global networks. “Those are the conversations Verizon is eager to be central given the work we've done. I was excited to hear the pace at which some of our partners and suppliers are working to accelerate development cycles to make 5G a commercial reality as soon as possible.”

AT&T made a series of announcements focused on the IoT. They included one to offer streamlined IoT services in the U.K. and a deal with Caterpillar to use the IoT “to connect and manage heavy machines and engines around the globe” (see here and here).